Tag: PhD

Publishing my PhD thesis last page first – the acknowledgements page

Since defending my PhD thesis last month a number of kind, optimistic people have asked if it will be published. All of the creative and most of the critical practice-led research outcomes have already been published, performed, or presented in some way. The website containing links to all of the supporting materials referenced in the thesis is online here: http://writingcoastlines.net

Writing Coastlines
[ it’s hard to take an attractive photo of a PhD thesis]

The thesis itself is broad and overtly interdisciplinary in scope. I have some thinking to do about what kind of press to approach with this strange mix of theory and practice, print and digital, technology and literature, cartography and narrative. I’m certainly open to suggestions.

In the meantime, I would like to begin by publishing the last and possibly best page first. Here then is page 437 – the acknowledgements:

This research has been generously supported by a full studentship from Falmouth University and by the Research Network of the University of the Arts London. I am indebted to the patience, pragmatism, and great good sense of my Director of Studies Doctor Phil Stenton. Many thanks also to Falmouth University Research Student Officer Jemma Julian, and Postgraduate Research Student Foundation Programme Director Doctor John Hall.

Aspects of this research have been furthered by engagement with individuals and events associated with the following organisations:

Alberta College of Art and Design, Arnolfini, Dartington College of Art, The Banff Centre, Electronic Literature as a Model for Creativity in Practice, Electronic Literature Organization, E-Poetry, Inspace, Labex Arts H2H, Obx Labs, The Sharpham Trust, and Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre.

The following archives and collections have been a delight to spend time in:

British Library – Maps, Manuscripts
Bodleian Library – Maps, Marconi Archive, Strachey Papers
Cambridge Library, Kings College – Turing Papers
The Telegraph Museum Archives

The following are but a few of the many friends and colleagues who have (often unwittingly) asked good questions, answered questions thoughtfully, led by example, lent logistical support, recommended readings, offered invaluable words of encouragement, or in other ways inspired me over the past four years:

Annie Abrahams, Celia Bannerman, Sandra Barry, Elisabeth Belliveau, Kathi Inman Berens, Sam Bleakly, Philippe Bootz, Laura Borràs, Barbara Bridger, Serge Boucherdon, Jason Camlot, Andy Campbell, cris cheek, Rod Coover, Sym Corrigan, Mark Daniels, Yra van Dijk, Linda Rae Dornan, Lori Emerson, Markku Eskelinen, Chris Funkhouser, Alison Gibb, Tom Harper, Carla Harryman, Mervyn Heard, Rozalie Hirs, Susan Hitch, Peter Jaeger, Mark Jeffery, Alice van der Klei, Edward Klein, Daniel Takeshi Krause, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Kurtis Lesik, Donna Leishman, Jason Lewis, Mary Loveday-Edwards, Caden Lovelace, Judy Malloy, Netwurker Mez, Nick Montfort, Judd Morrissey, Stuart Moulthrop, Camilla Nelson, Jussi Parrika, Maggie Pitts, James Purdon, a.rawlings, Arnaud Regnauld, Scott Rettberg, Ariane Savoie, Alexandra Saemmer, Jörgen Schäfer, Jeanie Sinclair, Steven Ross Smith, Lisa Somma, Brian Stefans, Sian Stenton, Stephanie Strickland, Neil “X” Thompson, Steve Tomasula, Fred Wahrus, Christine Wilks, and Nanette Wylde.

Finally, this research would not have been possible without the love, patience, curiosity, enthusiasm, good humour, bad jokes, beach walks, and total commitment of my two best friends – my husband Jerome Fletcher and my step-daughter Aphra Kennedy Fletcher. Thank you both.

J. R. Carpenter (2014) Writing Coastlines: Locating Narrative Resonance in Transatlantic Communications Networks, University of the Arts London, http://writingcoastlines.net

Writing Coastlines: Locating Narrative Resonance in Transatlantic Communications Networks

Yesterday, 11:11-1 11/11/14, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. Pending the addition of two paragraphs and the correction of a few typos, I will be a Doctor as well as a Carpenter. In the meantime, here are a few fun facts.

I sent my application to Dartington College of Arts. I received a full studentship from University College Falmouth. My PhD will be awarded by University of the Arts London. It took three years and nine months to complete, from start to submission. My thesis weighed in at 83,400 words, plus thirty-two figures, four appendices, and twenty-four pages of bibliography for a grand total of 437 pages. All of the creative and many of the critical practice-led research outcomes to have emerged from this research have already been published, performed, or in other ways publicly presented. For an abstract and links to all of these research outcomes, please visit: http://writingcoastlines.net/

JRC PhD

I’m going back to school this week, for the first time in a very long time. I’m excited. What took me so long? I graduated with a BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University in Montreal in 1995, the year Netscape came out. Remember Netscape? No? Well it was a really big deal at the time. It changed my life, anyway. I have been using the internet as a medium for the creation and dissemination of non-linear inter-textual hyper-media narratives ever since.

I never got around to doing a masters degree, mostly because I could never figure out what on earth to do one in. It seemed silly to go get another degree in the same subject I just got a degree in. But the more work I did in areas I had never studied the less qualified I seemed to be to pursue those subjects academically. Yes, Creative Writing MA, I’m talking to you. Categories confuse me, as do departments and disciplines. Some of my best friends are academics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just never met the write, I mean right M(F)A for me. Besides, I’ve been busy. The past fifteen years have been full of thinking and making and teaching and showing and writing and trying all kinds of things in all kinds of forms and forums, by writing into them, learning from them and watching them shift and change.

Things have changed muchly lately. For one thing, the non-linear inter-textual hyper-media narrative thing I’ve been slogging away at for so long is now an actual real thing. The electronic literature community has been incredibly good to me. And much of the electronic literature community’s activity is academically based. Increasingly, the opportunities, communities and collaborations I engage in are aided and abetted by academic institutions in some way. I’m cool with that. I like research. I like conferences. I especially like going to conferences and meeting fascinating people who have research labs in fascinating places which then sometimes invite me to and if I can go I get to meet even more neat new people and all the while I’m hearing about new work and talking about my work and selling everybody zines. No really, sometimes it really happens that way.

In May 2009 I went to an E-Poetry conference in Barcelona and met someone from the Performance Writing area at Dartington College of Art in the UK. Within a few months I was teaching an electronic literature workshop in the Performance Writing area at Dartington and thinking: Wow, electronic literature basically IS Performance Writing. And damn, if I had heard of the MA in Performance Writing at Dartington I would have done it years ago. But I am really glad I didn’t. Because now Dartington College of Art has merged with University College Falmouth in Cornwall, and I have been awarded a studentship to do a three-year practice-led PhD research degree at University College Falmouth in partnership with University of the Arts London. I will live in South West England, where it hardly ever snows, travel here and there, use the heck out of the nation’s libraries, meet lots of new people, try and sell them all zines and keep on doing the thinking, making, teaching, showing, writing and trying all kinds of things that I’ve been doing all along, only with funding, structure and support.

Now seems a fine time to go back to school.